year just a two-hour drive from the sub
tropical Mediterranean.
At Capileira, at 5,000 feet the second high
est village in Spain, a van with a loudspeak
er proclaims: "I am the chick seller; I also
have American turkeys, the biggest turkeys
in the world...." Capileira ladies buy briskly.
I learn that people here may be poorly
dressed but have a lot of money in the bank.
All from wheat and beans on these steep
slopes? No, they also have 20,000 sheep. And
there's a real-estate office: A Norwegian came
in 1972; now 170 Scandinavians and Ger
mans own land here; hotels are planned and
ski lifts. A discotheque opens this summer.
On the other side of the Sierra Nevada, in
Granada, the director of the Alhambra, that
romantic Moorish fortress with pleasure gar
dens and pools, is happy about the big new
parking lot. I rest in the shade, amid birds and
splashing fountains-it's a Muslim idea of
paradise. And all these good-looking damsels
walking by....
I hear music as crowds push into an amphi
theater on the Alhambra grounds. Young trou
badours in 16th-century-style knee breeches
play guitars and mandolins and sing, roman
tically, satirically, exuberantly. Those dam
sels applaud madly.
It's a get-together of extremely eligible
bachelors, the tunas, or university singing so
cieties, from Murcia, Valencia, and Asturias,
from Extremadura and the Canary Islands,
from most of the many regions of Spain. To
join, a student must be musical and give pri
ority to having fun. Then won't one's studies
take a little longer? Claro,but parents usually
understand.
That night the Alhambra is gloriously lit.
A tuno and a girl slowly walk away, his black
cloak enveloping both.
NEXT MORNING I stand in the Royal
Chapel before a gilded wrought-iron
screen and the tomb of Ferdinand of
Aragon and Isabella of Castile, the royal cou
ple called the Catholic Monarchs.
They took Granada in 1492 and thus com
pleted the reconquest from the Moors. They
also gave decisive impetus to the long process
of elevating a central power-in effect the
crown of Castile-above the other kingdoms
and regions on the peninsula. (The single ex
ception is Portugal.) Castilian increasingly
became the dominant language and Madrid,
in due course, the center of the first modern
bureaucracy. To this day domination from
Madrid meets widespread resentment.
Outside the chapel I see a slogan sprayed
on a wall: Andalusia wants autonomy! Simi
lar feelings churn in every corner of Spain,
prompted by pronounced cultural differences.
It's not only that Catalonia, Galicia, and
the Basque region still nurture different lan
guages. "Cross another mountain," I've been
told, "and you're in another country."
Indeed, a leading newspaper talks of 15
Spains, a nation of nations, a people of peo
ples. Long-smoldering problems of regional
ism are heating up.
ACK IN MADRID a sociologist ex
plains. Under the 16th- and 17th
century Habsburg monarchs, former
kingdoms kept their laws and privileges. The
notion of one big centrally run Spanish state
was brought from France by the 18th-century
Bourbon kings and glorified by 19th-century
ideologues and 20th-century generals. To his
dying day, Franco-himself a Galician, but
imbued with the spirit of centralism-extolled
the grand enterprise of building one Spain,
united and great. Quite a few Spaniards re
main faithful to this ideal.
"And so for 200 years centralism has sought
to suppress the individuality of the regions.
But the ways of the Catalans or Galicians or
Andalusians or Basques are still quite differ
ent from those of Castile...."
I hear a lot about Castilian attributes. Cas
tilians love to talk about them.
A restaurateur in Segovia noted for espe
cially tender suckling pigs-he roasts about
ten thousand a year, plus mountains of baby
lamb-says Castilian food is hard to digest.
"But we are a hard people, conditioned by our
hard climate, very cold and very hot."
A Madrid executive descended from 16
generations of dukes tells me: "We have some
virtues and some big faults. We are very
idealistic, and so we tend to go to extremes.
But we also are very individualistic-we all
want to be first, and when we can't be, we
criticize fiercely. We are loyal to family and
friends. We have orgullo." That means pride,
also stubbornness, sometimes arrogance.
"And we are very hard with our enemies.
Dialogue is difficult."
Spain: It's a Changed Country
307